Brandwatch Bulletin #80: World On A Walkabout

Pounding pavements.

9 August 2021

Welcome to today’s bulletin. This time we’re taking a look at how much we’re using our feet to get around, and how this links to tourism.

Let’s get to it.

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Humans are made for walkin’

We’ve covered travel in many forms in previous bulletins, but we’ve yet to focus solely on the humble method of walking. That all changes today.

To do this, we’ve grabbed data from Apple’s Mobility Trends Reports. This collates the number of direction requests made through Apple Maps, including walking directions. Everything is benchmarked against January 13 2020 levels, offering us an insight into what effect the pandemic has had.

The walking data is taken from 64 countries in total, with the option to break many of these down to subregion and city level. You can get the data yourself here.

To start things off, we looked at how walking levels have changed throughout the pandemic. Due to temperature influencing how many people will be walking at a given time, we only included the 57 countries in Apple’s data that are wholly or mostly in the Northern Hemisphere.

Here’s what we found

Going back to 2020, we can see the expected March drop as the pandemic was declared and many countries introduced restrictions and lockdowns. By May levels were increasing, obviously helped by warmer weather.

The trend continued upwards into the height of summer, which is exactly when you’d expected them to peak. But the difference compared to January isn’t as high as you’d expect, showing Covid-19 was still impeding people’s travel.

As winter drew in, walking levels decreased again and, come January 2021, they were down nearly 20% on the year before. By April there had been modest improvements, but then came May and the amount of walking direction requests shot up. They’ve been increasing ever since.

Requests have easily surpassed the summer of 2020, and we’re now seeing the kind of levels we’d expect from the warmer months. This isn’t just a sign of sunny, blue skies, but that traveller numbers are increasing too.

Walking travellers

We rely far more on map apps when we’re in a new place, especially when we’re on holiday and need to know how to get from sight to sight (or bar to bar). Locals are less likely to need that information, so if we see significant spikes in directions in a certain place it’s a sign of an influx of visitors.

Apple’s data backs this up. If we look at the top three countries where walking levels have increased the most, the influence of travel is undeniable.

All three of these countries are usually top tourist summer destinations, and with vaccination levels increasing and travel restrictions loosened in many places, it’s no surprise Croatia, Greece, and the UAE top the list.

For example, we can see a sharp increase for walking directions in the United Arab Emirates around the 19 August 2020, just after travel restrictions were loosened for Indians coming to the country. Meanwhile, both Greece and Croatia have seen an increase in tourist numbers.

We can see this reflected at the city level too.

All of these places are huge draws for tourists in the summer months. Toulon tops the list, which makes the news of the nearby island of Île de Porquerolles having to limit visitor numbers to 6k a day due to environmental concerns unsurprising.

Along with flight numbers increasing, the search for walking directions is a good sign for the tourism industry. But if there’s a surge that’s unevenly spread between locations, it could mean congestion, damage to local areas, and disruption to the people who live at these destinations.

As has often been the case, while the pandemic continues, positives still have their drawbacks. Achieving a full and equal recovery is never going to be simple or easy.

What should we cover next?

Is there a topic, trend, or industry you’d like us to feature in the Brandwatch Bulletin? We want to hear your ideas to make sure our readers are getting what they want. We may even ask to interview you if you’re involved with the topic.

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Thanks for reading

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Stay safe,

The Brandwatch React team